


Corbeau

by aderyn



Series: Scarlet Thread of Murder [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alchemy, Chemistry, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Forgiveness, Memories, Pining, Seaside, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes, Winter, the two of us against the world, two beds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:55:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a case, he wants to say, I never solved. One you don’t know about.<br/>One that taught me what life is, before you taught me again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corbeau

corbeau ~ green-black (also, Fr. , raven, sometimes crow.)

 

There are the genetics of eye colour, wordstock, clitics, corvids, cadmium chloride, bracteates, a missing jade. All things Sherlock reads about. Case.

Sunday, he weighs it. London slow-pulsed, close. Heavy cloud, east wind, might snow. Monday the same, but a breakthrough. Part fingertips and go.

He finds John peering into a patient’s eyes. 

“Not appropriate,” John says, but when is it ever, has it ever been. They slip through mist to the station, arrangements made, Mary’s voice on John’s mobile.

“Enjoy yourselves.”

“Come back in one piece; well, two.”

John’s eyes shine in the mist, different to the case-shine. How.

_Children are a glimmer,_ Sherlock thinks, _just there._ _You’re engaged, otherwise engaged, or you will be._

_Come with me now._

The case takes them to the seaside.

*****

“Celadon, Kelly, India,” Sherlock mutters, runs a palm over the duvet.

“Lime?” John says, arches a brow, “or maybe emerald?”

“Jade,” Sherlock says, “I told you.”

“Sherlock,” John says, “do you ever…?”

_Really think about what you left behind._

_I haven’t completely forgiven you and I never will._

He’s wrong. Sherlock could work it out, the alchemy, make it happen faster… or no, not anymore; that’s not how it works.

The little inn vibrates in the stiff wind. The air smells of tin and salt. There are crows, gulls, shearwaters crying on the cliffs, a woman who was poisoned and lost an heirloom.

They have one room, two beds; it’s familiar.

Sherlock sets his bag on a bed, looks at John’s.

“Let’s go,” Sherlock says.

“Like old times.”

John puts up the hood of his anorak.

Impossible to see if he’s smiling.

*****

Sherlock examines the edge of a plate. Glaucous, viridian, an almost blue.

The colour of your eyes.

What of this will they remember.

“Her eyes are copper-green. Not the metal but the patina, you know, the shell left behind,” is what John might write, later, trying to make a romance of what’s not.

Chlorides sulfides sulfates carbonates, verdigris. It’s a kind of alchemy. Protection.

“What’s the last thing you remember,” Sherlock asks her, the poisoned woman now recovering, and she can’t tell him but he pins it anyway, in her fingernails and hesitations, inflections, the patterns he saw on a stone, a cup. She gasps when he tells her, lets John take her wrist, ring for the nurse.

“You’ll be all right,” John says.

The gulls are crying, buffeted, outside the hospital. One flies off with a jam-bloody crust.

“That was,” John says, doesn’t finish. They watch a spindrift of snow curl down the grey of the thoroughfare, have hot tea at a café, something toasted.

“Might not need the gun this time,” John says, cracks a smile, peppers his eggs.

Breakfast at Baker Street. The first time you said _fantastic._ A pinch of something black and a twist of smoke.

Chemistry. Magic.

*****

Mary rings; John shines. 

Sherlock thinks, watches the sea.

*****

The gun comes in handy, quick to the back of the skull of a man who’s cousin to half the town, dressed dark, nothing to show in the storm light.

He gets Sherlock in a chokehold, makes him see the carpark crows behind his lids.

John takes the man down quiet; Sherlock pins him, phones with the other hand, spins the police a tale, calls Lestrade, doesn’t gloat.

John’s breath comes in gasps, then quiets. Loud heartbeat.

“You OK?”

“Fine,” Sherlock says, tightens his grip.

_You missed this; of course you did. You will._

John’s smiling now, must be.

*****

They walk, Sherlock talking about heavy metals, phonemes, brooch clasped in a palm.

“Beautiful,” John says.

Could be the treasure, the weather, the closure; the sea or the sky.

If a memory, he doesn’t say.

*****

The inn rattles in the wind; the beds are warm.

John put his hands to Sherlock’s bruises, stopped there.

“I know exactly what I left behind,” but no; it can’t be said.

_There was a case,_ he wants to say, _I never solved. One you don’t know about._

_One that taught me what life is, before you taught me again._

(I told you, Mycroft might say, not to get involved.)

He’s been involved since he was born; it’s just that no-one knows.

It’s murder.

_Ask Mary about the_ _dead languages_ , he could say, _linguist, you know._

“Goodnight, John,” he says.

He doesn’t dream, not exactly.

*****

In the morning John stands next to him at the seawall.

“Like old times,” he says. Fingers, brief and warm, on Sherlock’s wrist, the damp sleeve of his coat.

They’ll catch the train, greet London windswept and solved, quickening; Mary calling _look at you both._

Snow falls over the sea, in some other time; now the water shifts, green and grey and amber and gold. The last refuge of light scattering through a turbid medium, his pulse thick. That’s the future. He watches it fall. Watches the evidence over the sea.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ gulls and crows](http://johnlofgreen.blogspot.com/2012/02/best-day-grand-finale.html)   
> [patina](http://copperhand.com/blog/?p=39)   
> [seawall,Norfolk](http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/69791)


End file.
